


The Heart of a Hound

by Anonymous



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Outsider, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22046170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Kva tries his best to come to terms with his lord's immediate attraction and allegiance to the Primarch of the Luna Wolves.
Relationships: Horus (WH40k)/Leman Russ
Kudos: 12
Collections: PB Anon Meme - 2019





	The Heart of a Hound

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is an attempt to explain why Russ didn't lead one of the main battalions of the Crusade.

_A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself._

-

Kva is certain if his lord had a tail, he'd be wagging it.

It is a shock, to see the man who brought all of Fenris to heel desperately nipping at the heels of another.

Horus Lupercal, the first-found son of the Emperor of Mankind, Primarch of the Sixteenth Astartes Legion, cuts a glorious figure. Kva will not begrudge him that. Nor does he feel any shame at his own natural and immediate show of obeisance before the other.

But to see Leman Russ, the Lord of Winter and War, reduced to such a state is a different matter.

He waits for his lord and master in the shadows of the Great Hall. Everything is gilded and gold on Terra, glittering and shimmering despite the late hour.

It is nearly midnight when Russ at last takes his leave.

Kva does not know what he had expected, for everything is suddenly so foreign and he wonders if he had ever known the other, for he is not _this_.

"Ah, Kva," Russ greets, slinging a montrous arm about his shoulders. "Walk with me, will you?"

"By your will, my lord," Kva dutifully answers.

Leman Russ is not one for long silences, though Kva realises he has long kept his own council, equerry or no. For a couple paces, his arm remains wrapped about Kva's shoulder. As soon as they've cleared the central archway, he releases his hold. Kva turns and watches his lord stretch his great limbs. Only on Terra could he manage to do so without breaking the roof.

"He's a stubborn one, that brother of mine," Russ grumbles. "He had me waiting outside the council room for six hours and still wouldn't see me, can you believe it?"

Rather than linger on how absurd (and upsetting) the whole situation was, Kva concentrates on what is before him. Namely, his lord is expecting a response.

"That is disappointing," is his careful reply. "Did your lord brother give a reason why?"

"No, the skitna wouldn't even speak with me," Russ heaves another disappointed sigh and Kva is reminded of how entire tribes on Fenris have been slaughtered for lesser transgressions. "He sent his right-hand man, someone as shriveled up as you, to tell me he'd meet with me in the morning." He blows air through his nostrils, clearly frustrated, and Kva takes care not to clench his fists.

"It will be morning soon," he says instead.

His lord takes to walking again and Kva follows, ever a couple paces behind due to his limp. They're walking in the opposite direction of their own suites, the corner of the palace that has been set aside for their ilk, and a boyish part of him he'd thought lost wonders if his lord will lead him to the edge of world, as he had done so many times on Fenris.

Instead, his lord takes him to the gardens. Well, one section of the gardens. Freki and Geri are waiting for him there and he kneels down, stroking their manes and scratching behind their ears. There is a tenderness in his actions, another foreign element in his lord, and Kva is amazed his lord can smile like that without any bloodshed in sight.

His heart clenches, tight as a yumja-fish, and he thinks he can feel a kinship with his lord's brother then. They have all passed a sheer cliff face, so steep and tall and covered in snow that there is no going back. Just as Horus Lupercal mourns his place as the sole heir, so too does Kva mourn his lord's place as the best among them.

"Will you not scold me?" his lord asks him, as his face is framed in the light of Terra's sole moon. To see the raw _joy_ in his eyes is enough to make Kva ache.

"No," Kva answers. "It is not my place."

"Yet I can see it in your eyes," his lord counters, "You think my words and actions a disgrace. You think I am lowering myself unnecessarily."

Though Kva has earned his place as equerry by refusing to mince his words, there is nonetheless the tendency — most uncharacteristic for sons of Fenris — to take the kinder route.

"All that you love," he says, "The Vlka Fenryka will come to love too."

The Lord of Winter and War laughs then, low and haunting, like some spectre of the steppe. His eyes glisten with unshed tears and he asks Kva: "Is it so apparent? Have I pulled my heart out and pinned it to my throat?"

"It is," Kva answers, and it is agonising to admit so much (so little).

"I love him," Russ admits, looking down at his wolves. At his once-brothers. Kva feels like a child's flensing knife, set aside to collect dust after the first real hunt. "As soon as I knew of him, I knew I would love him, but when I saw him — when I came into his presence..." he trails off then, weeping quietly, and even when Freki licks at his palm and Geri nuzzles his side, the tears will not abate.

Kva wishes he were anywhere else in that moment. He wishes he had never been chosen as equerry, that his lord and master would have never shown him this side. For this is not the lord and master he has known his life; this is not the more-than-man he would walk to the ends of the earth with. This is the second-found son of the Emperor of Mankind who is understandably awestruck to be reunited with his older brother.

"He hates me," Russ adds, chuckling at his own admission. "He wishes I had never been found; Father said he feared I was beyond redemption. But I am so relieved and so happy — so, so, happy — to learn of him. To meet him."

He turns to Kva and gives a weak and watery smile.

"In that moment, I thought," he starts, and Kva wishes he would stop. Wishes he would not complete that sentence.

"I would give anything, just to stay by his side."

The words force Kva into the future. The immediate future and then the shrouded mists of the centuries to come. He sees his lord holding himself to his own oath and refusing to ascend to his rightful place as commander of the left wing. He gives the honour to his third-found brother, choosing instead to remain at Lupercal's side. And then, when all the brothers have been found and Lupercal is officially placed as the first among equals, his lord will be the first to send his congratulations and oaths of fealty.

Two hundred years. Two hundred years of adoration bordering on hero-worship, and it will all go up in flames.

Kva wants to warn his lord. He wants to tell him of the years that are to come and what it means to love someone who will only ever see him as a tool, as a rival. But it would not do any good, for the future is as set in stone as his lord's own star and just as Fenris was destined to be brought to heel by the man before him, so too is Leman Russ fated to be laid low by the brother dearest to him.

"Tell me it will be so," his lord begs of him.

"It will be so," Kva repeats, and there is a small fleeting truth in that, at least. He bows his head and excuses himself and his lord permits him to take his leave.

Alone once more, he hobbles through the shadows of the garden and tries his best to distinguish between the immediate present and the inevitable future.


End file.
